The Washington Post and The Guardian won the Pulitzer Prize in public service Monday for revealing the US government's sweeping surveillance efforts in stories based on thousands of secret documents handed over by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

The Pulitzer for breaking news was awarded to The Boston Globe for its "exhaustive and empathetic" coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt that followed.

The winning entries about the NSA's spy programs revealed that the government has collected information about millions of Americans' phone calls and emails based on its classified interpretation of laws passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The disclosures touched off a furious debate in the US over privacy versus security and led President Barack Obama to impose limits on the surveillance. (Associated Press)